


Omega Epilogue

by queenofroses12



Series: Aboard The Starship Enterprise [8]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Episode Related, Episode: s02e25 The Omega Glory, Explanations, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Hurt Spock (Star Trek), Telepathy, Vulcan Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:21:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27801448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofroses12/pseuds/queenofroses12
Summary: Set after the episode Omega Glory. Kirk , Spock and McCoy attempt to make sense of certain disturbing and confusing  aspects of the events.
Relationships: James T. Kirk & Leonard "Bones" McCoy & Spock, James T. Kirk & Spock
Series: Aboard The Starship Enterprise [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1980352
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	Omega Epilogue

“Alright, stop wearing a hole in my carpet” McCoy said, “He’s awake.”

  
Kirk, who had indeed been putting some strain on the antique carpet with his pacing stopped midstep.

  
“How’s-“

  
“He’ll live, quit freaking out. if I can get him to follow doctor’s orders for once, you’ll have your first officer back on duty in a day or two.”

  
McCoy noted how the young captain perceptibly relaxed at the reassurance. It had indeed been touch and go for a while, more serious than he had admitted to Kirk down there.  
A phaser blast set at maximum power was no joke, even if you hadn’t been the direct target. Factor in the strain of that bit of mind voodoo…

  
“Yeah, you can go and see him.”

  
Jim was already out of the doctor’s office before McCoy had finished speaking.

  
“Captain.”

  
Spock looked much too pale still, but he was definitely awake and alert, sitting up in bed. Jim smiled. His eyes had gone immediately to the biobed monitor – he was no expert at reading it, but he could see there was no immediate cause for alarm.

  
“You’re looking better.”

  
Considering he had looked more dead than alive when he was being rushed down to the sickbay from the transporter room, the current pallor wasn’t all that bad.

  
“How’re you feeling?” Then, seeing the raised eyebrow, “Physically, of course. I wouldn’t be so tactless as to imply the other sort of feelings were involved, in your case.”

  
McCoy snorted. Spock ignored the doctor.

  
“Somewhat inconveniently weak, but nothing worse. At least, nothing that necessitates my continued detention here-“

  
“You will be detained here just as long as I say so, Commander.” McCoy cut in before he could complete the sentence. “You are damn lucky Tracey’s phaser was not at full charge, or you’d be in the morgue now – whatever was left of you.”

  
Spock naturally did not react to the news of just how close his escape had been, but Jim paled a little.

  
“I presume Captain Tracey is under custody?”

  
“Yeah. Locked in the brig and awaiting court martial.”

  
Considering the way Jim glared at him after Spock had collapsed in the transporter room, Tracey may well have been thankful that there was a forcefield and a couple of guards between him and the younger captain, McCoy supposed wryly.

  
“I’ve contacted Starfleet. They’re sending a diplomatic mission to forge a more permanent peace treaty between the Yangs and Kohms. Now that they have been meddled with so spectacularly, the Prime Directive is no longer an issue. Tracey’s court martial will be at Starbase Nine – we’ll have to give evidence.”

  
Kirk sighed. Despite what he felt towards the man, it was an unwelcome duty to see a colleague, a man who was a hero to so many, stand trial for such an offense.

  
“I don’t get it. I really don’t get it. What can make a man like Ronald Tracey betray his oath, his honor, everything he stood for? Protecting the villagers…Yes, that I can understand. I don’t agree, but I can understand. If nothing else, the reluctance to stand by and see innocent lives wasted… Misguided, but understandable. But after that… This Fountain of Youth nonsense..”

  
He shook his head, baffled.

  
“He killed Galloway. He killed a young officer wounded in the performance of his duty. He could just have stunned the kid. He vaporized him. Then later, when the entire fight was pointless, when it was clear we could get away unharmed, when it was clear that he had lost, he tried to kill us just out of spite. A captain, a Starfleet captain, murdering his colleagues… The psych scans are supposed to keep the wrong ones out of the Captain’s chair, but..”

  
“I don’t think this was the sort of thing psych tests can filter out, Jim” McCoy said softly. “Tracey wasn’t one of the ‘wrong ones,’ as you call them. his record speaks for itself, doesn’t it ?”

  
Kirk nodded.

  
“That’s what makes it so…eerie. A decorated captain, a good captain, a good man…And he was reduced to that raving creature locked in the brig.”

  
“ He lost his crew. you saw what that did to Matt Decker.”

  
That was one uncomfortable truth that Starfleet psychiatrists had come to accept – the sort of people who could be good captains are also the sort of people who wouldn’t be able to survive the loss of their ship, their crew.

  
“Matt Decker had a cause. His plan was..deranged, but he had a real cause. Tracey was plain delusional.”

  
“That is sort of the point, Jim” McCoy suggested. “He wanted, needed, a cause. He wanted to believe that there was something valuable, a gift to the universe, a cause he could fight for. Otherwise it would mean that his crew, his friends, died for no reason at all, just another blip in the stream, forgotten.”

  
“They won’t be forgotten.”

  
“He wanted them to be remembered, not just as the Fleet’s dead are remembered, but as martyrs. If they had died so as to bring the secret of eternal life to the world, to the Federation… If you ask me, he held onto that belief so long and so fanatically because he couldn’t accept his people died in agony for nothing. Then when he heard that people on the surface are immunized, that his people would have been safe, would have been alive, if only they had beamed down, if only his landing party had stayed a little longer…How long? Were they off by hours? Or just minutes? No wonder he broke completely.”

  
Jim remembered his own horror on looking down at the charred patch of ground where a second away a young officer named Galloway had stood, the moments of agony in the transporter room when he cradled Spock’s limp, barely breathing form in his arms, yelling at McCoy to do something…

  
To know his entire crew was gone, had died under his command…

  
He shuddered as he imagined the hundredfold agony that must have gone through Tracey’s mind, wrecking the man. How many of his officers, people he had greeted as they came aboard, people whose names and faces he could recall at an instant’s notice, his friends, his inner council… His Spock and McCoy, whoever they may have been…Young lieutenants he had been mentoring, hopeful ensigns on their first voyage.. Tracey’s insanity was no longer puzzling. Only horrifying.

McCoy saw the look in Jim’s eyes and decided it was high time to change the subject.

  
“By the way, what in the name of all that is holy was that down there with the…What was it..Constitution? How did you know to spout that off?”

  
Kirk shrugged, smiling a little.

  
“A history obsession can occasionally come in handy, Bones. That was the United States Constitution. The earliest real democracy us humans put together – at least, the only one that lasted.”

  
“And you memorized that.”

  
“It’s…It sounds good.”

  
“Yep, sure, but did it work?”

  
“Um… They…Well, a lot of people tried to make it work, but…Well, it was prewarp earth.” He admitted, then frowned. “I suppose the real question here is how the American constitution and flag ended up here – light years away from Earth.”

  
“Parallel evolution-“

  
“No way. The same ideals, yes, maybe, but right down to the very words? And the flag? And the Bible? It looks like someone other than Tracey did a lot of meddling, and quite some time ago.”

  
“Or the phenomenon could be proof of the Qelessar Theorem.” Spock suggested.

  
Kirk’s eyes widened. McCoy looked bemused.

  
“You really think so ?”

  
“That seems to be the only hypothesis that accounts for the facts.”

  
“Hello? What theorem? And Layman’s terms, everyone didn’t take quantum physics at the Academy.”

  
“Orphan planet syndrome.” Kirk translated.

  
“A highly emotive and largely inaccurate term, Captain.”

  
“But descriptive. The idea is that alternate timelines are sort of running in parallel..And under exceptional circumstances, objects and people can get exchanged from one timeline to another.”

  
“Like our Mirrorverse flip.”

  
“Sort of. Only, this theorem claims that it can happen on a much larger scale. That an entire world can become displaced in time.”

  
McCoy stared.

  
“You’re saying that..that was Earth? Terra ?”

  
“The Terra of another timeline, doctor. Another universe, if that is the term you prefer.”

  
“A timeline where the cold war went hot.”

  
McCoy’s response was a set of choked, and very impolite, words, not all of them in standard.

  
“Right when I thought it couldn’t get any weirder…”

  
“It is scarcely more unlikely than the idea of another world developing in identical lines with Terran culture, Doctor. And frankly, it is less disturbing.”

  
McCoy paused for a moment to replay that and decide whether he had just been insulted.

  
“Speaking of disturbing, what was it that you did down there? The entire making suggestions deal ? I thought you needed skin contact for that mind voodoo.”

  
“Skin contact is essential for a mind meld, doctor. I was not melding with that young lady.”

  
“Looked like hypnotism to me.”

  
Jim grinned.

  
“Hey, Bones, you ever heard Uhura sing that song of hers? At first his looks could hypnotize…”

  
Spock raised an eyebrow in mild irritation.

  
“Lieutenant Uhura is a very efficient and capable officer. However, her sense of humor is…somewhat difficult to comprehend.”

  
“Well, that explains why every blasted female from stem to stern’s got a crush on you” McCoy suggested with a grin. “Hypnotize, eh?”

  
Spock looked horrified (at least, as horrified as any self respecting Vulcan could look) at the suggestion.

“Doctor, Captain, I certainly never-“

  
“Just kidding, Spock” Jim hastened to assure him. “As you said, human humor is weird.”

  
“Yes, and in this case, rather..insulting.”

  
McCoy had the good grace to look sheepish. Jim smiled apologetically.

  
To be fair, Spock had had his own very awkward run in with the so-called ‘hypnotic’ gaze. The human part of his DNA, coming as it did from an esper, only served to enhance, not dilute, Vulcan telepathic abilities. That had been easy to deal with in his homeworld, and later at the Academy where he had been too busy with studies to allow much room for socializing. As an ensign on his first assignment however…

  
His only excuse was that he had been oblivious. And lonely, as much as he hated to admit it. after all, he was very young, younger than most of his fellow ensigns, as he had graduated early. Their usual, very human, methods of socializing had not appealed to him, and his duties aboard left considerable free time on his hands, which he had decided to utilize for improving his social skills which had been his weakest point at the Academy.

  
It was…an inadvisable decision, to say the least.

  
An “exotically good looking” teenaged telepath who was raised in a culture where affection, between members of either sex other than bonded pairs, was invariably platonic, desperate for company, plus other healthy young adults raised in a much more relaxed culture…

  
He had had no idea he was unconsciously influencing his female (and certain male) colleagues to feel a romantic attraction towards him. Fortunately, even had he been interested in reciprocating (which he was not), his bond to T’Pring would have held him honor bound not to act on those inclinations.

  
A very awkward talk from Commander Number One and Captain Pike had thoroughly disillusioned him. (By the time the explanations - ‘The Talk’ as the Captain referred to it - was over, all three of them were blushing and the captain was trying valiantly not to laugh at the mortified ensign.) He had steered clear of peer company for a long while after that. It helped that Number One had decided to solve the problem by assigning him enough important work to keep him busy and in the company of senior officers.  
“So you don’t always need skin contact for telepathy?” Jim sounded intrigued.

  
“ Generally, yes. My people are touch telepaths. However, particularly gifted individuals are capable of projecting relatively simple thoughts and ideas over a short distance. I implanted a strong suggestion in the young lady’s mind that it would be interesting to examine the communicator.”

  
“A useful trick..” Jim looked interested.

  
“Yeah, but that useful trick was what nearly finished him off.” McCoy interrupted. “It puts way too much strain on your system, Spock. That’s why you passed out.”  
Passed out? Damn near went into coma, more like.

  
“It is not so taxing under normal circumstances, doctor. In this case my body had been weakened by the phaser’s impact and was unable to withstand the added stress.”

  
McCoy shook his head, half in bafflement, half in exasperation. Hypnotism or telepathy, the Vulcan voodoo never failed to freak him out. He turned his attention to the biobed readings and left the hobgoblin and Jim to continue the discussion. Ten minutes, he supposed. Ten more minutes, and he’ll boot Jim out.


End file.
